ISLANDS IN THE STREAM

“That’s what she wanted to do last night,” he said. “Have you got any iodine? I didn’t like to take those things into a drugstore.”

“Who’s she?”

“Kathleen. The fresh outdoor type.”

“You had to participate.”

“It seemed to amuse her and we’re supposed to amuse them.”

“You’re burned pretty badly.”

“Not really. But I’m going to get out of this town for a while.”

“You’ll be taking yourself along wherever you go.”

“Yes. But I won’t be taking a lot of other people I know with me.”

“Where are you going to go?”

“Out West for a while.”

“Geography isn’t any cure for what’s the matter with you.”

“No. But a healthy life and plenty of work won’t hurt. Not drinking may not cure me. But drinking sure as hell isn’t helping any now.”

“Well, get the hell out then. Do you want to go to the ranch?”

“Do you still own it?”

“Part of it.”

“Is it all right if I go out there?”

“Sure,” Thomas Hudson had told him. “But it’s rugged from now on until spring and spring isn’t easy.”

“I want it to be rugged,” Roger had said. “I’m going to start new again.”

“How many times is it now you’ve started new?”

“Too many,” Roger had said. “And you don’t have to rub it in.”

So now he was going to start new again and how would it turn out this time? How could he think that wasting his talent and writing to order and following a formula that made money could fit him to write well and truly? Everything that a painter did or that a writer wrote was a part of his training and preparation for what he was to do. Roger had thrown away and abused and spent his talent. But perhaps he had enough animal strength and detached intelligence so that he could make another start. Any writer of talent should be able to write one good novel if he were honest, Thomas Hudson thought. But all the time that he should be training for it Roger had been misusing his talent and how could you know if his talent still was there? To say nothing of his métier, he thought. How can anyone think that you can neglect and despise, or have contempt for craftsmanship, however feigned the contempt may be, and then expect it to be at the service of your hands and of your brain when the time comes when you must have it. There is no substitute for it, Thomas Hudson thought. There is no substitute for talent either and you don’t have to keep them in a chalice. The one is inside you. It is in your heart and in your head and in every part of you. So is the other, he thought. It is not just a set of tools that you have learned to work with.

It is luckier to be a painter, he thought, because you have more things to work with. We have the advantage of working with our hands and the métier we have mastered is an actual tangible thing. But Roger must start now to use what he has blunted and perverted and cheapened and all of it is in his head. But au fond he has something fine and sound and beautiful. That is a word I would need to be very careful of if I were a writer, he thought. But he has the thing that is the way he is and if he could write the way he fought on the dock it could be cruel but it would be very good. Then if he could think as soundly as he thought after that fight he would be very good.

The moonlight did not shine on the head of Thomas Hudson’s bed anymore and gradually he stopped thinking about Roger. Thinking about him doesn’t do any good. Either he can do it or he can’t. But it would be wonderful if he could do it. I wish that I could help him. Maybe I can, he thought, and then he was asleep.

IX

When the sun woke Thomas Hudson he went down to the beach and swam and then had breakfast before the rest of them were up. Eddy said he did not think they would have much of a breeze and it might even be a calm. He said the gear was all in good shape on the boat and he had a boy out after bait.

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